It pained Vail to see the woman he loved in such agony, but he didn’t know how to take away her pain other than killing her to put her out of her misery. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. Perhaps it was selfish, but he wanted to be with her for as long as he was able to if she was going to die. Despite knowing that she would only be a part of his life for a fraction of the whole of it, he’d become irreversibly attached to Victoria. To watch the light fade from her blue eyes was something he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to endure for decades. He supposed that had been too much to ask for when an entire clan of vampires had decided to turn her into their prized pet.

Absorbed in his panic, he hadn’t noticed Diana or Jean-Claude approach. Only when the latter spoke did he tear his gaze away from the dying woman’s face. The elder vampire’s prompt to turn her was both tempting and forbidding at the same time. Since he and Victoria had first skimmed through the tome from his family’s archive, he’d perused the section on the turning ritual a little more thoroughly. The book had stated that humans below the age of twenty-five had the best odds of surviving because their bodies had yet to pass their peak condition, but it had also warned that those in poor health were not as likely to make it. After reading that, he worried that because of everything Lady Crest had been through recently, she wouldn’t be strong enough to handle it.

[i]But there’s nothing left for her to lose now,[/i] he silently reminded himself, turning back to her again. If the ritual failed, he would be saddened by the knowledge that he’d been the one to snuff out her life in the end, but at least he could say that he’d tried everything he could to save her. Her weak nod assured him that this was what she wanted too. Whether it worked or not, it was worth trying if it meant she had even the slightest chance of making it through this battle alive. That was enough to convince him.

“I’ll do it,” he said decidedly, informing Jean-Claude which of them would be the one to turn her. The other vampire might have been more experienced, but he didn’t trust anyone else with Victoria’s life when she was in such a vulnerable state. To ensure that nothing went wrong, he would do it personally.

His eyes flicked briefly to Gerald, who had burst into the room at that moment, before he leaned over Victoria and touched one more kiss to her lips. As he did, he reached for one of the pieces of her armor that he’d tossed to the side, wincing at the silver’s unforgiving burn, and pressed the narrow edge into his wrist until it dug into his skin. His own dark blood welled up through the cut, and he collected it on two fingers which he then skimmed over her bottom lip, streaking it with scarlet. The tome had stated that all she needed was one drop, so he wanted to make sure he gave her that before he drank her blood in case he threw himself into a frenzy and forgot the other crucial step of the ritual.

With nothing left to do to postpone the bite, he inhaled slowly and lowered his mouth to her neck, stretching his jaws wide to sink his fangs into her flesh. There was no point in wasting time to prime her skin first, so he squeezed her hand instead as he buried his canines deep into her throat. This bite was different than the times he had fed from her previously. Before, he had lapped from shallow veins to avoid seriously injuring her, but now, he searched for a carotid artery to siphon every last drop of blood that flowed through her body, drinking with the intent to kill rather than quell a desire for a ‘small taste.’